OAKLAND, Calif. _ The warehouse illegally converted into the Ghost Ship art collective where 36 people died in an inferno last week was not listed in a city database of commercial buildings that require yearly fire safety inspections _ and no records exist of any inspections of the structure, according to a city employee familiar with the database and inspection records.
If fire inspectors had been inside the building they would have seen what visitors and former residents called a death trap and a tinder box: piles of wood, shingles and old furniture, extension cords and often-sparking electrical wires running willy-nilly throughout the structure, welding equipment and propane tanks scattered about _ the kind of fire code violations that could have led inspectors to shutter the building immediately.
"They never inspected it. It's not on the inspection rolls," said the city employee, who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to news organizations about the fire.
The Bay Area News Group has asked repeatedly since Monday for public records showing fire safety inspections for the building. City officials have responded each time by saying that records are being searched for and compiled. A lawyer for the news organization complained in a letter to City Administrator Sabrina Landreth Monday that the compiling of records should not block the public's right of access to them.
A city spokeswoman, Karen Boyd, asked for time to respond to this story Thursday, but then only repeated that records were still being compiled. She declined to discuss the Fire Department database.
Fire Chief Teresa Deloach Reed and Fire Marshal Miguel Trujillo did not immediately respond to emails Thursday requesting comment.
It was not immediately clear why the building, legally permitted only as a warehouse, was not in the database, or how many other commercial structures in the city may also be missing from the database. An Alameda County civil grand jury report in 2014 estimated that as many as 4,000 of Oakland's roughly 11,000 commercial buildings aren't inspected as required in a given year. The city has nine civilian inspectors in its Fire Prevention Bureau _ a low number compared with other California cities of similar size.
City officials have refused to release any records showing when fire inspectors were last at the Ghost Ship, and Mayor Libby Schaaf's administration has sent emails throughout the city and even to City Council members telling them not to discuss or release any public records about the building.
Schaaf was asked at a news conference Wednesday when the last time fire inspectors went to the building.
"I don't know," she said, "And," she added, "I don't need to know" to understand that the city needs to a better job inspecting properties.
Schaaf said she would not "scapegoat city employees" in the wake of the tragedy, the nation's worst fire in terms of fatalities in 13 years.
The Fire Prevention Bureau's inspectors are not firefighters. It is their job to inspect commercial buildings yearly for violations of Oakland's fire code for hazards such as exposed wires, blocked stairways and exits that are not marked with the common neon exit sign visible from 100 feet away in the dark.
Code enforcement inspectors, who work for the building department and whose job is to respond to complaints about things like piles of garbage and trash or violations of permits that assign a building a specific use, have been to the Ghost Ship, records show. But they took no action to close it down.
Schaaf said Wednesday that the city's inspection arms need to a better job of coordinating and communicating.
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